Best laid plans...

When we are young, we each make plans for the rest of our lives… At 22, I will get married. I will have three kids by the time I am 30. My husband will stay at home and work and I will be the head of a major corporation by the time I am 35. We will have a home in the northern United States, and two vacation homes, one on the coast of Florida and one in a foreign country if possible. I will retire early and be able to travel with my children on their summer vacations. My husband and I will be walking hand-in-hand on the beach in Florida when we are in our eighties. Oh how our plans do change!

Five years ago I found myself in my early 30’s and recently laid off from a really good paying job in Connecticut. The job market wasn’t looking that promising and my only dependents were furry and four-legged, so I made the decision to move back to Vermont. Four years ago I moved back to the farm with four additional four-legged creatures and a fiancé.

This past week, the smell of homemade bread, freshly baked pies and radish relish filled the farmhouse kitchen as I prepared for farmers market. I paused after preparing the labels for the items headed to market and watched the chickens, ducks and geese lounging in various states of repose in the backyard. They had full tummies after getting left over pie crust scraps. My laundry was drying naturally on the line. The berries which went into the pies came from the farm or from our neighbor’s farm down the road. Radishes, all from our garden, went into making the radish relish. My refrigerator handle was covered with flour as I obviously had not wiped my hands between rolling pie crusts and placing them in the fridge to cool. I though back to five years ago, living in the city, looking out my window to see my neighbors’ houses and cars whizzing by 6.75 feet from my living room window, wondering if I would ever find my place in life.

Tonight as I was getting ready for work, my to-do list running through my mind, my grocery list being jotted on an index card, my coffee spilling on the counter, the cats and my husband protesting my departure, and my cheese slicer missing from it’s rightful place; I paused to looked out the window at the moon and the lake and listened to the geese squawk in protest of being penned up for the night (for their own protection from predators) and I thought to myself, I have found my place.